DSWA

Two passions: Data Science and MMA. What happens when you combine the two?

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Rafael
Rafael

Data Science Meets UFC: Analyzing Sentiments for Charles do Bronx vs. Arman Tsarukyan

As a big fan of MMA, I decided to apply some Data Science to the UFC, the biggest MMA event in the world. I chose one fight as the target of this study: Charles do Bronx, one of my favorite fighters, against Arman Tsarukyan, which took place at UFC 300 on April 13.

The Inspiration: Sentiments and Twitter Experts

I always follow the week leading up to the fights on Twitter to see what the (Twitter) experts have to say, and this sparked my curiosity:

How do these experts' sentiments vary depending on the fight?

That is, what is their perception before the fight, on the day of the fight, and after the event?

Tweet Scraping: Overcoming Challenges

To bring this idea to life, I first performed some tweet scraping. Unfortunately, since Twitter became X (thank you, Elon), this task has become much more complicated (aka expensive). As a result, I couldn’t gather a large number of tweets, collecting approximately 3,000 tweets.

Word Cloud: Charles do Bronx’s Positive Aura

With the mined tweets, it was already possible to get an idea of how fans perceived the fighters. Notice how the perception seems to be positive towards Charles do Bronx through the Word Cloud of tweets about him.

Word Cloud Example

Sentiment Analysis: Vader from NLTK

To make the study a bit richer and more interesting, I applied a Sentiment Analysis technique: Vader from NLTK. Here’s how I processed the tweets:

  1. Sentiments Aggregation:

    • Positive sentiments → Positive numbers
    • Negative sentiments → Negative numbers

  2. Daily Sentiment Tracking:
    This approach allowed me to calculate an overall sentiment per day, creating a timeline of how fans perceived each fighter.

Sentiment Graphs: Peaks and Drops

Here are the sentiment graphs for both Charles do Bronx and Arman Tsarukyan:

Charles do Bronx

Graph showcasing sentiment trends for Charles.

Arman Tsarukyan

Graph showcasing sentiment trends for Arman.

Observations:

  • One fighter shows an incredible sentiment peak on fight day (UFC 300).
  • The other experiences a notable drop in sentiment during the same period.

The Challenge: Guess the Winner

Looking at the graphs, can you guess:

  1. Who won the fight?
  2. Who lost the fight?

Let me know your thoughts, and I’ll reveal the answer in the next update!